The Young in One Another's Arms Read online

They all carried fragments of their days back to Clara, and as she taught them needle and cone shape to name the trees, they taught her the names of island children, of old-timers and newcomers. Gladys described and imitated so well that Clara could, when Boy or Mavis took her for an occasional ride, identify people along the road. Every time she was right, saying “George” or “Sarah” or “Skyler,” Boy would try to match her with “hemlock” or “spruce” or “willow.”

  “This place was just one big blur of green to me at first,” he said, “and that’s as bad as not being able to tell one nigger from another, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve been a city boy,” Clara said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I could tell you a Shell Oil tree, a Macdonald’s tree, a White Spot tree, and that was about it, and I thought that birds-of-a-feather stuff was lousy propaganda.”

  “Nature’s as bad a bible as any other,” Clara admitted.

  “’Less you read it like you do, for pleasure.”

  “What are you thinking, so silent there in the back seat, Ruth?”

  “I’m thinking it’s a good thing you’re embarrassed instead of spoiled by compliments.”

  “You accusing me of sweet-talking Miss Clara?”

  “You sweet-talk everyone, Boy, and we all love it,” Ruth said, laughing.

  “Tell that to Gladdy. She said she had the prize for badmouthing until I came along.”

  “Are you quarreling with Gladdy?”

  “She say I’m a nigger chauvinist every time I call that baby ‘him,’ and I say, ‘She-it, man, what am I supposed to call him, it?’ And she say, ‘She-it, woman, why not?’ It ain’t what you can call racial strife, which I handle better. This battle of the sexes is just too scary with so many kinds of sexes, along with prenatal wondering.”

  “Do you want her to have a boy?”

  “Twin boys,” Boy decided, “even up the balance.”

  Gladys’ temper did flare more often these days, and Boy was usually the target. It sometimes seemed as if he put himself in the way of it, a kind of decoy away from Tom or Mavis, but he could tease her into laughter as well, where Mavis could only nag and Tom worry at her.

  “I now know what a sex object is,” Gladys said tiredly one evening, sent home to keep her swollen feet and ankles up.

  “The last two weeks seem as long as the whole nine months,” Clara said. “Even I can remember that.”

  “But, you know, I wouldn’t want them out in a test tube where I could watch them grow. Maybe a window in my belly would be all right. Do you think I’m going to turn into one of those women who dig motherhood?”

  “Maybe half the time,” Ruth said.

  “I wish Mavis were having one, too. Two for me seems greedy.”

  “Boy wants twin boys.”

  “Boy’s a pain in the ass, and, when I tell him so, he says it’s his social duty. Maybe it is.”

  They heard a car door slam. Coon Dog was already lying across the back door, his ears starched with hope, his tail pounding. Mavis came in first, letting the dog shove past her to greet Tom.

  “That creature is getting as big as a bear,” she said.

  “Me?” Gladys asked.

  “Not you, lovely. How are the ankles?”

  “Which ankles?”

  Tom came in, bringing the dog, Boy behind him carrying the cashbox.

  “We made so much money today,” Boy announced, “that we got to start a college fund for she-it.”

  “Do you see what I mean?” Gladys demanded of Ruth and Clara.

  “There’s an old rule of survival, Boy,” Ruth said. “Don’t tease a pregnant woman in the last month.”

  “Who’s teasing? I believe I am the only one around here with the proper respect for motherhood and apple pie and so on.”

  “And on and on,” Gladys said.

  “How are you feeling?” Tom asked.

  “I AM FEELING FINE!”

  “And now for the nine-o’clock news,” Boy said. “The mass murder on Galiano this evening of an ill-assorted group of dropouts is just another instance of what premature lactation in a pregnant woman …”

  “Premature what?” Gladdy interrupted.

  “It’s a Latin term for the milk of human kindness,” Boy explained.

  “Let’s count the money,” Tom said. “You can kill him as soon as he’s done this month’s books.”

  The money-counting ritual absorbed them all, and, when it was over, Ruth wheeled Clara into her bedroom.

  “They’re tired, all of them,” she said. “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that business falls off after Labor Day.”

  “Do you suppose Gladdy will ever learn to be impatient with herself?”

  “I expect so. It’s so hard to avoid learning, but I’m not sure it’s healthy, are you?”

  Mavis’ light rap on the door stopped Ruth from answering. Together they got Clara ready for bed, a nightly ritual they all enjoyed.

  “I think,” Mavis said, “I’m going to be driving the school bus. How’s that for my first job after my Ph.D.?”

  “Do you really want to do it?” Ruth asked.

  “After Labor Day, Boy and Tom can run the café. Gladdy’s going to be busy with the babies. It would bring in a few dollars. I like the kids …”

  “Are you a bit sorry you’re not going off to that job in the Maritimes?”

  “It was pretty dead-end. If a good job ever does turn up, well …”

  Mavis had finished giving Clara a sponge bath and was gently rubbing her back.

  “You should really have been a nurse,” Clara said. “You have such good hands.”

  “Probably, but my father’s a doctor,” Mavis said, “and my mother was a nurse. According to them, I didn’t have the right qualifications. You have to be stupid, obedient, and a good lay. Power’s such an ugly thing. I wonder why I want to go back into the system at all as anything, but sometimes I do.”

  “Not to be pushed around,” Ruth said.

  “To be somebody,” Mavis said. “To be safe.”

  Once Clara was settled, Ruth and Mavis went back into the living room. Only Gladys was there, playing with the cat.

  “You in the mood to give another back rub tonight?” Gladys asked.

  “Sure,” Mavis said. “Come on up.”

  Power had never been a choice for Ruth, that dream of vindication, authority, freedom to be who you were and have what you wanted. It had been real enough to Mavis, still was; though, when it was offered to her, the job and Gladys to go with it, she had turned it down. For Tom’s sake? For the children’s? Or because, really confronted with power, she did find it ugly, for the winner as well as the loser. Still, Boy couldn’t go on forever acting out the tension Mavis and Tom courteously refused to deal with.

  Ruth stepped out onto the terrace and sat down in one of the summer chairs. A ferry sounded at the entrance of the pass. She heard its engine long before it came in sight, its bright lights momentarily dimming the summer stars. Only after it passed did she notice Tom, sitting below her at the edge of the cliff.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Because Gladys insisted, Mavis went with her and Tom in the water taxi to SaltSpring Island, where the hospital was. It was late Saturday afternoon when they left. Ruth went down to the café to take over the dinner cooking, and Boy waited on tables. They didn’t get home until after ten o’clock. There had been no phone call.

  “I wish we’d told them to phone anyway, every little while,” Clara said fretfully.

  Boy, nervous and unusually quiet, finally decided to take the dog for a walk. Ruth heard him come in several hours later, long after she had settled Clara in bed. She went down to tell him there had been no call yet.

  “We should have let her have them at home the way she wanted to,” Boy said. “It’s unnatural, them over there, us over here.”

  “Safer there.”

  “What’s safer?” Boy asked with a hard, short laugh.

  “They’ll be home soon enough,” Ruth
said, wanting to reassure and deflect him.

  “It’s a bad sky out there,” Boy said. “Sky’s going to cry on us any minute now.”

  “Boy, Boy,” Ruth said, “what is it? Babies get born every minute. You don’t have to be frightened.”

  “You’re talking about white odds, lady. I got five little brothers and sisters born and buried pretty much the same day. Last one my mama, she cut off his ear; so God wouldn’t want him. God ain’t that fussy, turns out.”

  Ruth’s hand was on Boy’s head, cupping his ear, knowing that kind of maternal insanity for the children being born this night, the grim bargains for life one is willing to make, sacrificed ears, scarred faces, ugly names. Overlook these children and let them live. We’ve been bound by enough fear and grief. These two are already paid for.

  “It’s a good thing you’re not keeping Tom company tonight.”

  “Nobody keeps that man company, you know that?”

  “He’s healing,” Ruth said.

  “Why doesn’t Mavis phone and tell us how many heads there are anyway?” Boy demanded.

  No phone call came that night. Boy and Ruth went sleepless to the café in the morning, apprehension having settled to dread because someone should have phoned to say something, anything: a false labor, a long labor. They could not all have died of it or even been struck dumb.

  The morning ferry from SaltSpring, due in at eight-ten, was half an hour late. Mavis, with three parallel fingernail scratches across her cheek, walked into Jonah’s with the first of the foot passengers.

  “Why didn’t you phone? What is it?” Ruth demanded, following Mavis into the kitchen away from the curiosity of early coffee seekers.

  “I couldn’t … not on the telephone.”

  “She hurt you,” Boy said, touching Mavis’ cheek.

  “No, Tom did; it’s all right. There were twins, a boy and a girl. The boy didn’t make it, but the other one’s … fine. Ruth, you’re going to have to help them.”

  “Does Gladdy know?”

  “Yes, but it’s Tom. He went berserk, not in front of Gladdy, thank God.”

  A customer banged a knife against a glass, and Boy turned with an angry oath.

  “Easy,” Ruth said.

  “I’ll deal with him,” Boy said. “I’ll fry his brains for breakfast.”

  “I think you’d better go over, Ruth,” Mavis said.

  “Do they know why?”

  “A simple thing—the cord. Tom hates her.”

  “The baby?”

  “Gladdy. He called her a whore and a head and a dyke and a murderer. I hit him. I had to. I had to do a lot of things.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “At the hospital. Somebody’s going to have to help him, but not me.”

  “We’ll close up right now,” Ruth said.

  But it was nearly an hour before they could clear the café of people. Mavis made no attempt to help. She sat on a stool in the kitchen and stared at the near trees.

  “If that tomfool wanted a whipping boy, why didn’t he ask me along?” Boy muttered at the dishes he was loading into the washer. “What nigger ass is for.”

  “You wouldn’t have done,” Mavis said quietly.

  “Wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I?”

  “He hates her,” Mavis repeated.

  “He’s hurt,” Ruth said quietly.

  “Why did he have to blame anyone? He’s got a baby. Isn’t one enough for his fantasy to father a new species?”

  “He wanted a killer whale because they sing so pretty, because nothing on earth is trying to kill them, not even their own kind,” Boy muttered on.

  “Did you see her?” Ruth asked.

  “The baby? No. Tom did. He saw them both, but he only looked at the dead one, the boy.”

  “Did you see Gladdy?”

  “Yes, they were nice about that; it’s a little hospital. She’s pretty doped up. I don’t think they even gave her a chance to go into shock.”

  “I’m going with you, Ruth,” Boy said. “Otherwise you’re going to get needed in too many directions at once.”

  He phoned for the water taxi before they locked up and drove home to Clara.

  “Will you tell her?” Mavis asked Ruth.

  “Yes,” Ruth said, “and then, listen to me, Mavis, you’re to tell her exactly what happened, everything, because you’ve got a lot of understanding and forgiving to do before we get back.”

  “I won’t be here when you get back.”

  Ruth reached out and turned Mavis’ damaged face to her. “Have you forgotten who persuaded Gladdy to have this baby? Have you forgotten you love her?”

  “I wish I could! Tom tried to rape me about four hours ago and I wish I could forget that, too.”

  “Don’t say that,” Boy said softly. “Don’t say that.”

  “He hates me. He hates Gladdy. He hates us.”

  “It’s only stupid, stupid sorrow,” Boy protested.

  Mavis began to cry.

  It was Boy who had to explain to Clara. Ruth took Mavis to her room, undressed her to discover her fine, always shoulder-sheltered breasts bruised, her thighs bruised. Ruth got a basin of warm water, a washcloth, and a towel. She bathed Mavis with a hand taught its gentleness by Mavis, her face, her neck, her bruised breasts, her hurt thighs, while Mavis lay passively crying.

  “Sleep now. I’ll have someone look in on Clara, and we’ll phone this evening.”

  “Don’t let him hurt anyone else,” Mavis said. “Don’t let him hurt her or Boy.”

  Ruth went down to find Boy and Clara sitting together, holding hands.

  “I’ll call to get someone in,” Clara said at once. “You must get to them as quickly as you can.”

  “Is Mavis all right?” Boy asked.

  “I think so,” Ruth said. “I think she’ll sleep. You may have to help her, Clara.”

  “Yes, all right,” Clara agreed. “But go now. I’m sure the water taxi’s waiting.”

  “We’ll phone as soon as we can.”

  “A little girl, Ruth,” Clara said.

  Boy drummed the steering wheel as he drove back to Sturdies Bay. Ruth watched the road, carrying her toward so much hope and grief commingled that she didn’t know how much she could help herself, never mind the others.

  “I am mad at him,” Boy said, drumming a rhythm into his words. “I sure am mad at him!”

  “He’s going to be mad enough at himself not to need any help with that.”

  “If he ain’t still crazy.”

  As they got out of the bus in the parking lot, they saw the water taxi come alongside the dock. Both of them ran, aware now that some hours had passed since Mavis left Tom. It was eleven o’clock, at least half an hour still until they could reach him.

  It was a beautiful day, with the sense of high summer though it was the middle of September, even the air on the water fragrant with berries and sweet grasses.

  “There were whales in the pass this morning,” the boatman told them.

  “Is it true they have no enemies?” Ruth asked Boy.

  “Not the killer whales,” Boy said. “Maybe after we’d learned to breathe, we could have taken a turn back into the sea, too, and never had to learn to walk upright at all.”

  The film Ruth hadn’t seen in weeks suddenly began to turn in her head again, Tom walking up the front steps, the report of the gun, the blood bloom on his shirt, the flowering of Willard’s face. Breathe, she thought to him. Breathe.

  They were approaching Ganges now, only a five-minute taxi ride from there to the hospital, and there was one waiting.

  “You got a speech all prepared?” Boy asked Ruth on the way up the hill.

  “No.”

  “I’ve written me a whole sermon and even got the first and second lessons picked out, thinking it’s best to speak to the man before I bust his head.”

  Ruth shook her head. Boy in this manly necessity wasn’t funny enough to laugh at or serious enough to discourage. He’d have to stand o
n a chair to hit Tom. And Tom, in whatever extremity, would never lay a hand on Boy except in affection. If anyone had ever suggested that Tom might one day lose his considerable but carefully controlled temper, let out all that anger and frustration and grief he’d tried so hard to heal in himself instead, Ruth would automatically have feared for Gladys, whom he needed to be so much surer of than he was or perhaps ever would be. It was really Gladys he had attacked this morning, the bitch, the witch, Woman, who would not finally ever give, give in, give up, who threatened the center of him, who killed his child. Ruth was not afraid he would hurt anyone else now, but she was afraid of his suffocating in the stench of his own anger. Breathe, Tom, breathe.

  They hurried into the hospital and saw Tom, standing in the corridor, his back to them.

  “Tom,” Ruth said, and he turned, startled.

  “Jesus,” Boy said softly. “The devil got here before me.”

  Tom had a black eye, four or five stitches over his eyebrow, and a badly swollen lower lip.

  “Where’s Mavis?”

  “At home,” Ruth said.

  “Is she all right?”

  “Yes,” Ruth said. “Upset, but all right.”

  “I told Gladdy we’d been in … an accident.”

  “What she hit you with, man?”

  “I don’t know, but she should have done it sooner and harder.”

  “Are you all right?” Ruth said, taking his arm and leading him over to a bench.

  “I think so,” Tom said. “They just let me up a little while ago, to see Gladdy.”

  “You’re green, man.”

  If there had never been any question that Tom was trying to kill Mavis, nobody could doubt that her own instinct had been murderous.

  “You two stay here,” Ruth said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She found a nurse, who took her to a doctor.

  “A nasty cut, slight concussion, that’s all. He’s lucky. It would be a good idea if you took him home to rest. He wouldn’t say anything about it. Neither would the young woman who brought him in.”

  Ruth went back to find Boy sitting quietly holding Tom’s hand just as he had been holding Clara’s earlier that morning. Boy Wonder, you must have been given all the grace of your mother’s five dead children.

  “Have you got a room?” she asked Tom.